THE REFORMATION AND THE COMMUNITY Europe's Reformations, 1450–1650. By James D. Tracy. Lanham, MD, and Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999. Pp. xvii+387. ISBN 0-8476-8835-6. £15.95. Religious choice in the Dutch Republic: the reformation of Arnoldus Buchelius, 1565–1641. By Judith Pollmann. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999. Pp. xii+288. ISBN 0-7190-5680-2. £45.00. Radical Reformation studies: essays presented to James M. Stayer. Edited by Werner O. Packull and Geoffrey L. Dipple. Aldershot: Ashgate. 1999. Pp. x+201. ISBN 0-7546-0032-7. £45.00. The Reformation of the dead: death and ritual in early modern Germany, 1450–1700. By Craig Koslofsky. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000. Pp. xiii+223. ISBN 0-312-22910-0. £42.50.

2003 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 203-209
Author(s):  
PHILIP BROADHEAD
Keyword(s):  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
Cultural Groups ◽  
Religious Reform ◽  
Communal Life ◽  
Modern Germany ◽  
The People ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Four Books ◽  
The Impact

The four books under review examine different aspects of the impact of the Protestant Reformation on communities in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The study of communal responses to religious reform has become a significant aspect of Reformation research in recent years, and it has served to emphasize that religious reform was a process rather than an event, and that it was a collective concern, which involved families, neighbours, and all those in guilds and congregations at all levels of society, both in town and village. Study of the community in history has, however, raised some problems, principally over definition, for communities were not institutions or geographical areas, but a complex web of overlapping social, economic, and cultural groups, within which there was a range of shared and conflicting interests. Despite the value placed by rulers and magistrates upon unity, communal life was a constantly mutating mix of conflict, concession, and change, to which the Reformation added a dynamic and volatile new dimension. Although the authors here use the notion of community, they attach to it a variety of interpretations, and one might wonder whether such a malleable term has value as a tool for historical analysis. In fact, these works show such flexibility to be a strength, for in the Reformation, beliefs were only gradually defined, and levels of support were variable and unpredictable. Interpretations which recognize the changing secular and spiritual worlds inhabited by the people of the period are particularly useful for providing new insights into how religious reform was experienced by the majority of those living at the time.

The Impact of the Reformation

2019 ◽  
pp. 40-61
Author(s):  
Martin Pugh
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
Elizabeth I ◽  
Long Term Effect ◽  
Queen Elizabeth I ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Impact ◽  
European Diplomacy ◽  
Francis I

This chapter focuses on the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century. Following Henry VIII's break with Rome in 1531, the English Reformation led Britain into a protracted struggle with the two great Catholic powers, Spain and France, for the next 300 years. The long-term effect was to define Britain as the leading Protestant power; but more immediately, it posed a far greater threat to England than Islam, and effectively destroyed the rationale for crusading activities. In this situation, the Islamic empires actually became a valuable balancing factor in European diplomacy. Henry's readiness to deal with the Muslim powers was far from eccentric during the sixteenth century. Both King Francis I of France and Queen Elizabeth I of England took the policy of collaboration much further.

scholarly journals The Reformation of Hell? Protestant and Catholic Infernalisms in England, c. 1560–1640

2010 ◽  
Vol 61 (2) ◽  
pp. 279-298 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER MARSHALL
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Social History ◽  
English Language ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Impact

Despite a recent expansion of interest in the social history of death, there has been little scholarly examination of the impact of the Protestant Reformation on perceptions of and discourses about hell. Scholars who have addressed the issue tend to conclude that Protestant and Catholic hells differed little from each other in the Elizabethan and early Stuart periods. This article undertakes a comparative analysis of printed English-language sources, and finds significant disparities on questions such as the location of hell and the nature of hell-fire. It argues that such divergences were polemically driven, but none the less contributed to the so-called ‘decline of hell’.

The Jews and the Reformation

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Austin
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Global Perspective ◽  
First Century ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Jewish Learning ◽  
The Impact

This book examines the attitudes of various Christian groups in the Protestant and Catholic Reformations towards Jews, the Hebrew language, and Jewish learning. Martin Luther's writings are notorious, but Reformation attitudes were much more varied and nuanced than these might lead us to believe. The book has much to tell us about the Reformation and its priorities, and it has important implications for how we think about religious pluralism more broadly. The book begins by focusing on the impact and various forms of the Reformation on the Jews and pays close attention to the global perspective on Jewish experiences in the early modern period. It highlights the links between Jews in Europe and those in north Africa, Asia Minor, and the Americas, and it looks into the Jews' migrations and reputation as a corollary of Christians' exploration and colonisation of several territories. It seeks to next establish the position Jews occupied in Christian thinking and society by the start of the Reformation era, and then moves on to the first waves of reform in the earliest decades of the sixteenth century in both the Catholic and Protestant realms. The book explores the radical dimension to the Protestant Reformation and talks about identity as the heart of a fundamental issue associated with the Reformation. It analyzes “Counter Reformation” and discusses the various forms of Protestantism that had been accepted by large swathes of the population of many territories in Europe. Later chapters turn attention to relations between Jews and Christians in the first half of the seventeenth century and explore the Sabbatean movement as the most significant messianic movement since the first century BCE. In conclusion, the book summarizes how the Jews of Europe were in a very different position by the end of the seventeenth century compared to where they had been at the start of the sixteenth century. It recounts how Jewish communities sprung up in places which had not traditionally been a home to Jews, especially in Eastern Europe.

Pensioners, Prisoners, and Pupils: Corpus Christi College’s Charity in Tudor Oxford

2019 ◽  
pp. 240-262
Author(s):  
Lucy M. Kaufman
Keyword(s):  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
Corpus Christi ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Nicholas Udall ◽  
The Impact

This chapter examines the impact of early Reformation on Corpus Christi College. If one takes the posting of the Ninety-Five Theses in the traditional way as the starting-gun for the Protestant Reformation, then Corpus Christi is as old as the Reformation itself. Of course, ‘the Reformation‘ did not begin as early as 1517. It would be another ten years before the Reformation made any recorded impact in Corpus itself, although Luther’s ideas reached Oxford pretty soon. With the exception of the Nicholas Udall affair, the impact of the early Reformation on Corpus Christi is evident largely by its absence during the lifetime of the first president, John Claymond. After Claymond’s death, the college’s peace was briefly disturbed by a new brand of Reformation, by the ideas arising from Henry VIII’s Break with Rome.

The Reformation, Capitalism and Ethics in England during the 1590s and early 1600s

2018 ◽  
pp. 139-178
Author(s):  
Neema Parvini
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Protestant Ethic ◽  
John Calvin ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
Moral Systems ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Spirit Of Capitalism ◽  
The Impact

This chapter complicates the outline of moral philosophy in Shakespeare’s period provided by the previous chapter by considering the impact of the Protestant Reformation and the challenge posed by John Calvin to the synthesised humanist moral systems that had been developing during the Renaissance. It also considers the impact of the rise of capitalism, which is broadly coincident with that of Protestantism. It considers the moral implications of Calvin’s three solas, as mediated in England by William Perkins’s A Golden Chain (1591) and Thomas Becon’s The Governance of Vertue (1556), while noting Shakespeare’s possible hostility to puritanism. In the second half, it reconsiders Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905) and the Calvinist notion of “the calling”, while tracing the changing attitude towards commerce in the work of Giovanni Botero, John Wheeler, and Walter Raleigh. It argues that Calvin’s thought lacks the individualist and entrepreneurial enterprise found in Machiavelli, and that any attempt to locate “the spirit of capitalism” must be found in the “unresolved tension” between Machiavelli and Calvin.

Anglo-Catholicism in West Wales: Lewis Gilbertson, Llangorwen And Elerch

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-95
Author(s):  
Mark Chapman
Keyword(s):  
Gothic Revival ◽  
Language Services ◽  
Catholic Clergy ◽  
National School ◽  
The People ◽  
Welsh Language ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Home Village ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Church

Lewis Gilbertson (1815–1896) was one of the most prominent Anglo-Catholic clergy of St David's' diocese. He became the first incumbent of the new church at Llangorwen just outside Aberystwyth, built by Matthew Davies Williams, eldest brother of the Tractarian poet Isaac Williams (1802–65). Gilbertson adopted ritualist practices and Tractarian theology, which later influenced the church he was to build in Elerch (also known as Bont Goch) where his father, William Cobb Gilbertson (1768–1854), had built his house in 1818. After a brief survey of the development of Tractarianism in Wales, the paper discusses the building of the church at Llangorwen, which had the first stone altar since the Reformation in the Diocese of St David's, before discussing Gibertson's ministry in the parish. From Llangorwen Gilbertson moved to Jesus College, Oxford where he served as vice-principal and where he became increasingly convinced of the need for a new church and parish for his home village. He had earlier built a National School in 1856 commissioning the well-known Gothic revival architect G. E. Street. For St Peter's church, completed in 1868, he turned to William Butterfield, who had built the Tractarian model church of All Saints', Margaret Street in London. Gilbertson, who appointed himself as first incumbent for a brief period, set the ritualist tone of the parish while at the same time ensuring regular Welsh-language services to attract villagers from what he called the 'broken shadow of practices of the primitive Church' of the Welsh Methodists. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of Gilbertson's later career before assessing the impact of Tractarianism in west Wales, especially the confident and idealistic vision of a return to the apostolic faith for all the people of Wales on which it was established.

scholarly journals Anna Reinhard Zwingli – ‘Apostolic Dorcas’, ‘dearest housewife’, ‘angel-wife’, ‘ziel van mijn ziel’ and ‘mater dolorosa of the Reformation’: From woman to valued citizen

2016 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Raymond Potgieter
Keyword(s):  
Life Story ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
Religious Reform ◽  
Her Family ◽  
Contentious Issue ◽  
Pinnacle Point ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Impact

A biography of Anna Zwingli might be compiled by skipping from one pinnacle point in her life to another. However, much of her story is relative to what is known about her husbands John Meier von Knonau and Ulrich Zwingli. But Anna was more than simply the wife of a lesser noble or a famous reformer. Her life story was also intertwined with development of the Reformation in Zurich and the impact it had upon her and her family. The Reformation did not only bring about religious reform but also had an impact on women and their ministerial roles. Anna was indeed a woman of the Reformation but also the wife of a reformer. Together with other women of the Reformation and of Zurich she served its cause from within its gender confines overshadowed by her husband, Ulrich Zwingli. The role of woman/women remains a contentious issue for many in the Christian church.

scholarly journals Sacred Space and “True Religion”: The Irish Reformation and the Collegiate Church of St Nicholas, Galway

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 14-45
Author(s):  
Steven G. Ellis
Keyword(s):  
Sacred Space ◽  
Religious Reform ◽  
Financial Difficulties ◽  
Corporate Worship ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
European Standards ◽  
Pipe Organs ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Large Groups ◽  
The Town

This paper looks at the impact of religious reform in Tudor Galway, focusing on how the use of sacred space in the collegiate church of St Nicholas, Galway, was reshaped during the Reformation. The Elizabethan Settlement of Religion was, by European standards, quite conservative, permitting the retention of choral foundations and pipe organs and, in Ireland, even the traditional Latin offices, sung from the chancel. Unofficially, even some images and ornaments survived. Alongside these conservative survivals, the corporate worship of the new prayer book was also enhanced by regular sermons in English, Irish, and Latin by graduate preaching ministers, which were a popular innovation initially attracting large groups of people. Later, however, financial difficulties and the lack of a preaching minister for regular sermons undermined this local compromise: Galway merchants mostly drifted back to Catholic worship, which had remained freely available outside the town.

Reformation and Counter-Reformation in Europe

2021 ◽  
pp. 99-117
Author(s):  
Jonathan Willis
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Political Dimension ◽  
Religious Reform ◽  
The Social ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Recent Trends ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Impact

This chapter provides an overview of the Protestant and Catholic Reformations in Europe. It begins by establishing the significance of the Reformation and commenting on recent trends in historical scholarship. An outline of theological change during the period follows, before consideration of the political dimension of religious reform across Europe, including the position of religious ‘radicals’, and the development of theories of resistance against persecuting secular rulers. The chapter moves on to consider the impact of the Reformations on religious belief, practice, and identity, looking at the spread of reform through visual and musical means, as well as topics such as education and disenchantment. It ends with the social impacts of Reformation on religious violence, toleration, and gender, and concludes by suggesting that the transformations instigated by the Catholic and Protestant Reformations wrought changes of great magnitude and complexity upon the Churches, nations, and peoples of early modern Europe.

The Protestant Reformation

Disruption ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 82-139
Author(s):  
David Potter
Keyword(s):  
New Technology ◽  
Political Order ◽  
Reform Movement ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
The Political ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Printed Word ◽  
The Impact

The chapter opens with a discussion of the social and political order of 15th-century Europe and the Catholic doctrine that provided the ideological core of the system. The next topic will be the development of a new technology, printing, which is crucial to the reform movement initiated by Martin Luther, who made unique use of the printed word to spread his ideas. The next topic is the political use of the Reform movement first in Germany, then in England and the Netherlands. The impact of the Reformation is the development of the nation state and the growth of reasoning based on science.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document